The Pirates lost their ninth straight game Saturday night in a 13-2 thumping by the Padres at PNC Park.

Paul Maholm took the loss after allowing seven runs on 10 hits in 6 2/3 innings. It was the most earned runs he’d allowed this season.
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The Padres, who averaged 3.46 runs per game entering the series, have scored 28 runs in the past two games against the Pirates.

The Pirates’ pitching staff appears to have all suddenly turned into pumpkins, despite Halloween being over 2 1/2 months ...

Saturday, August 06, 2011

The Cubs need to increase the accountability of their players and they have to convey a message of enough is enough to their fan base to reverse a trend of empty seats and apathy that has been evident for much of the 2010 and 2011 seasons. Players who don’t want to do whatever it takes to win can no longer be allowed to enjoy a comfortable environment at Wrigley Field. A player who doesn’t want to play hard can’t be allowed to have a secure ...

We can make this happen. Bring back the old logo, not as a third jersey, sometimes-on-a-Friday type deal. We have to send a message. With a change to the post-season structure, a deep pool of emerging talent and a general manager in Alex Anthopoulos who is as impressive and trusted as his last name is tough to spell, we have our opening. We need the logo back for next year. Spring training. Pride back.

I tuned to the YES Network to make sure it was still an ESPN/Bud Selig clone and it was. Michael Kay announced David Ortiz’ stats v Mariano Rivera going into the 9th inning match up on Friday, August 5, 2011 in Boston. Kay says Ortiz does well against Rivera and

is 8 for 25.

Ortiz does well against Rivera but the stat deliberately omits 6 meaningful at bats in the two players’ careers and cheats the baseball consumer out of a larger sample size, ie the post season, stats for which are ...

Or as that brave humorist, Helen Rowland-Office, once wrote…“Home is any four walls that enclose the right ballplayer.”

David Wright’s scorching drive in the first inning Friday night struck halfway up that infernal left-field wall at Citi Field for a one-run double instead of a two-run homer, just as Chipper Jones knew it would.

“It’s funny to see them hit the ball off the wall and look at me like, ‘God-damned, what do I got to do?’” Jones said Friday, before that 16-foot wall and Tim ...

There is no issue with keeping guys on the bench engaged and keeping the starters fresh. Every team does it. And the Tigers do it, too.

But four guys in the same game? Does Leyland really fill out his lineup card on Thursday with Don Kelly batting second and playing first base (his first start there all season) and think that it gives his team the best chance to win? I doubt it. He looks at the fact that Alexi Ogando is pitching, the Tigers are ...

The AL MVP award is shaping up as a Boston-New York battle, with Adrian Gonzalez, Jacoby Ellsbury, and, if his August and September rival his July, Dustin Pedroia all legit candidates, and Granderson very much in the hunt.

People who favor pitchers are also throwing in the name of CC Sabathia, who will take the mound this afternoon with a 13-2 record in his last 15 decisions, not to mention having surrendered just seven earned runs ...

Back in 2008 Shane Victorino made it clear to Dodgers pitcher Hiroki Kuroda that you do not throw at his head. Tonight, he made it clear to Giants pitcher Ramon Ramirez that it is not ok to throw at his back simply because you’re the defending the World Series Champions, down 8-2, and in the midst of getting embarrassed at home.

Shane was mad as hell and he wasn’t going to take it anymore. He tossed his bat aside, started towards the mound, and was temporarily restrained by home plate umpire ...

Friday, August 05, 2011

6) Andrew “The Scranton Horror” Brackman, RHP, Grade B-: 7.26 ERA with 58/69 K/BB in 76 innings for Scranton, 71 hits allowed. He is hounded by abominable, eldritch control problems, like insane flute music pulsating with a mind-bending disharmony of universal, ultimate chaos. Those who ruminate overmuch on the chthonic mysteries of Andrew Brackman’s career put their sanity at risk, as their mental boundaries melt under the hideous assault of such an unspeakable waste of talent and money. ...

Tony Campana drove in a pair of runs with an inside-the-park homer and the Chicago Cubs beat the Cincinnati Reds 4-3 on Friday for their sixth consecutive victory.

It was the first professional homer for Campana, who also singled, doubled and made a nice catch in center field. Campana became the first Cub ever to hit an inside-the-park shot at Wrigley Field for his first major league homer.
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Campana, among the fastest players in baseball, zipped around the bases and scored standing up ...

Baseball sent a warning to its major and minor league players last week that may sound odd, if not comical, but is a sign of these drug-testing times: stop ingesting deer antler spray.

Until the warning went out, baseball players, taking their cues from the body-building and NFL cultures, felt safe using a deer antler spray as an alternative to steroids with almost no risk of flunking a drug test.

You will be shocked at what this GM… (Beware of Porn Spam Bots on Facebook!)

In addressing the bloggers during last night’s Royal’s game with Baltimore, Moore said, “We’re not gonna out-talent anybody here. We’ve got one of the smallest markets in all of sports, period. Our owner is a terrific owner, but he’s not going to go out and spend a $100 million payroll when we can only sustain a $55 million or $60 million payroll in this market.”

Asked what changes the team might undertake this upcoming offseason, Ricketts was noncommittal.

“I don’t know just yet,” he said. “It’s something we’ll decide at the right time.”

“A lot of players on our team are from the Dominican Republic,” said Ricketts. “We thought perhaps if we had a little better facility down there we could give our guys more resources to attract and develop the right players.”

Ricketts’ youngest brother, Todd, was featured on the CBS program “Undercover Boss.” He ...

What a spectacle of undignified behavior, of hypocrisy, of extremism, of civility abandoned, of epic brattiness. Could a despoiled city possibly have proved itself more worthy of its tarnished reputation?

I’m talking, of course, about last Sunday’s Tigers-Angels game at Comerica Park in Detroit.

Either get Krabbenhoft on the phone or have Bill James sit Papi down and explain RBI to him.

Despite a fantastic statistical season, the cranky side of David Ortiz surfaced again on Thursday night.

In a year that has seen the Boston Red Sox slugger battle pitchers from the Orioles and blame the media for being hit by the Yankees, Ortiz didn’t try to hide his emotions after Fenway Park’s official scorer removed a RBI that was Ortiz was initially given after an opposite-field single during ...

One night near the end of the 2008 season, we played the first-place Phillies, in Philadelphia. Well, my teammates played. I watched from home. We lost the game, the fourth straight time they’d beat us. I flicked off the TV. If only I could have pitched tonight, I thought. I carefully flexed my elbow. It wasn’t coming around like I thought it would. My surgeon had warned me there’d be days like this, that every rehab had its peaks and valleys. But this particular valley had lasted too ...

Are you a traditionalist? Adrian Gonzalez is hitting .356, leads the league in RBIs, and plays for a first place team. He’s the classic model of what a league MVP has traditionally been. If you like RBIs and team win totals, you don’t have to look far to find your obvious candidate.

Did you grow up reading Bill James? Then you’re probably in the “best player should win” camp, and you prefer to reward a guy for what he did and ...

Another look into the mindset of ballplayers from the other side of the Pacific (or at least one of those countries from the other side of the Pacific):

Kuroda said he heard that Larry Bowa, the Dodgers’ former third base coach, said on MLB Network that any player who refused to be traded from a noncontender to a contender should have his mental makeup questioned. (Bowa said in a telephone interview Thursday that his comments were directed at U.S.-born players, adding that he is aware Kuroda ...

If baseball players are the pillars of one model of orderly society, art is littered with the corpses of social outcasts. Nietzsche and Van Gogh went crazy. Dostoyevsky was politically oppressed. Brian Wilson couldn’t get out of bed for a decade. But there’s a reason why A&E can get away with running low-budget shows like “Hoarders” and “Intervention” back-to-back for 24 hours at a time. Even in the baseball universe, we can’t escape the pull ...

In short, he was exactly the ace the Mets wanted and more. Since then however, Johan has spent parts of 3 seasons on the DL including likely missing the entire 2011 campaign. The Mets aren’t getting anything out of their expensive starter other than a lot of headaches, he’s not putting fans in the seats at Citi Field while he sits on the DL, and they’ve won nothing since he’s been there and are currently a below average major league team (no matter ...

What he did:If baseball awarded the equivalent of Oscars, Pinson would have been a perennial Best Supporting Actor nominee. One of the quintessential role players of the 1960s, Pinson did many things well, hitting for average and power, stealing 305 bases lifetime, and finishing just shy of 3,000 hits. He was never really a star, overshadowed by Cincinnati Reds teammates like Frank Robinson and Pete Rose, though Pinson ...

So with a decorative wreath from a Hannibal flower shop, I stopped and wished the local baseball hero a happy birthday.

I wonder what an early ballplayer like Beckley would think of the game today? What would he have to say about these enormous ballparks that can hold more people than there are in his hometown of Hannibal? The color barrier was broken long after he died. I’m curious what he would have to say about such a diverse ...